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ISBN 978-1-4412-6031-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Unless otherwise identified, Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to the memory of my father, Rev. Ernest L. Jakes, Sr.; to my brother Earnest L. Jr., whose presence in this world has made life richer and fuller for me; and especially to the destiny of my three sons, Jamar, Jermaine and T.D., Jr., whose lives have been a burning blaze in my heart. I know that they are manuscripts yet to be written and songs waiting to be sung. To the world I say get ready for them, they are being printed at this very moment and soon to be published. They will be well worth reading.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

WHEN I WAS A CHILD

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

— 1 CORINTHIANS 13:11 —

Every man, great and ordinary, famous or forgotten, enters this world traumatically and begins to perceive his surroundings through the eyes of a child. It is during these tender years that he experiences the beginnings of his masculinity.

Our development as men is shaped by the things we encounter as children. Our masculinity is defined by our fathers and our relationships. Dysfunctions in our adulthood were also shaped or influenced by the presence—or absence—of the men who fathered us. What painful childhood memories haunted young Adolf Hitler? Who touched the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., or of Abraham Lincoln? What childhood pains or dreams framed the thoughts of Malcolm X and Mahatma Gandhi?

Our father’s absence can form a sustained question in our minds, a haunting thought, Maybe it was something I did or something I lacked that caused him to leave. We learn the art of suppression early, deeply burying the painful questions and the native sensitivity that is so easily bruised. We suppress the natural creativity that springs from a probing mind as we encounter the pain of continually being told, Shut up! I don’t have the time to listen to you.

Our fathers are our first definition and demonstration of masculinity. Unfortunately, our fathers’ model has caused many of us to equate masculinity with absence, irresponsibility, sullen silence, or violence. All the fruits of our manhood are rooted in our childhood—our self-esteem, our inner awareness of who we are, our sexuality, our preferences. They are all deeply planted in the soil of our early memories, experiences, and definitions.

God plants an infinitely curious mind within every little child and adolescent. As they grow older, many children bend to indifference and ignorance, while others surrender to scorn and punishment, and eventually most will finally succumb to a formal education that will quench their natural hunger for knowledge.

Young minds never stop gathering information through their senses, and they constantly process their perceptions. What do you suppose those Judean children perceived the day the young Rabbi, Jesus, rebuked the men who were pushing the small ones away from Him? What went through their minds as the children heard Him say, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not (Mark 10:14)? How many lives and destinies were changed forever by His tender embrace and unconditional love that day?

Within every man dwells the little child who preceded him. Manhood is rooted in childhood, and many of the thoughts you and I have today come from our early experiences as children. You may read these words with sadness if you are one of the thousands who involuntarily recoil at the mere sight of the words, Father, Daddy, Papa, or Dad. They only represent pain and loss to you.

I Spoke as a Child

My mother used to listen closely to me when I talked. Now I understand that my mother’s attention dignified my opinion. Her actions confirmed to me that I mattered. Her careful (and patient) listening enriched my thinking process with a self-esteem that caused me to believe that my thoughts were important. Regardless of whether she agreed or didn’t agree with what I said, what excited me was that she listened to me.

Jesus spoke when He was a child. According to Luke 2:46–47, He entered the temple and spent five days listening to and speaking with the leading doctors of the Law while He was barely an adolescent! The Bible says these scholars were astonished at his understanding and answers (Luke 2:47 TLB). If you want to know who someone is, listen to what he says! For of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh (Luke 6:45). Jesus started perfecting the art of expression early in His life, and even the leading teachers of the day listened to Him. What a boost that must have been to His self-esteem! There is something about expressing thoughts that airs out the mind and sorts out the closets of the intellect.

My mother stimulated my creativity by listening to my expressed thoughts. Her attention gave me respect for my own opinion, a respect that still exists today. I am concerned that in the busy world of our day, the children know we are not listening to them, and the pressure is rising.

Sadly, many times our parents did not listen to us. Neither have we always listened to our children or to one another. Thus we have raised a generation of angry young men. They in turn have carried their inner anger into marriages in which they believe no one is listening to them. This consuming anger has surfaced as violence, introversion, perversion, or outright self-destruction! Their self-esteem and integrity have been destroyed because they have felt muzzled all their lives. They suffer like bound and gagged prisoners in a rigid shell of outrage and despair.

As parents, pastors, and leaders, we often seem extremely stretched ourselves, but we need to listen anyway! Men who curse and swear or even become violent are just overgrown little boys having a tantrum because they feel out of control. They are frustrated because life isn’t listening!

When I was a child, I spake as a child (1 Corinthians 13:11). We all need to be able to communicate our thoughts and express how we feel. Jesus said, But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man (Matthew 15:18). If there is anything worse than the rage, the frustration, and the other negative things that come out of us, it is the things that do not come out! Festering wounds are dangerous wounds. A rumbling volcano is a dangerous omen, a solemn warning of a coming eruption that could rain down destruction on everyone living in its shadow.

Many men lose their ability to communicate during childhood. As youngsters we are told what is appropriate to do (or is it merely convenient?). "Just sit over in the corner and be quiet!" Now, as adults, we feel the rush of unchecked adult passions, frustrations, and anger coursing through us on the inside, and we can’t speak. We can’t communicate. We’re ready to explode, but we don’t dare cry! We’re hurting too bad to laugh. The only emotion we are allowed to express is anger! (Why is anger the primary emotion attributed to the male gender?)

The raging child who takes a hammer and pounds his toy into oblivion soon becomes the grown man who runs his fist through the wall and batters his wife into an early grave. Many times this kind of rage is fueled by an inability to turn thoughts into words. It is crucial for men to be able to vent emotions and frustrations safely through appropriate channels—for when they don’t, everything breaks loose. No one wins but the adversary of men’s souls.

I Understood as a Child

Our understanding is the digestive process of our minds. It is the stage in which we come to a resolve and draw conclusions. Paul said that when he was a child, he understood as a child. If as adults our understanding is still elementary and childish, we may come to immature conclusions. Childish wisdom can be the most dangerous of all—especially in the mind of a wounded adult.

So many children who have grown up in broken homes determine at some point in their lives that it is their fault their fathers and mothers separated. Many attempt to shoulder the blame and responsibility for their fractured upbringing and become terribly scarred because of their childhood conclusions and understandings. We court disaster when we carry childish perceptions into adult relationships.

Distorted childhood perceptions and conclusions are often a spawning bed for crippling thoughts of inadequacy. Such perceptions and conclusions produce a lifetime of insecurity. At this very moment you and I still carry the deep wounds that were incited by the cutting statements of other children who never knew that their reckless words of scorn were lethal! Even our sexuality is affected by early encounters and incidents. Many grown men are recreating scenarios from their scarred and twisted childhood in their adult fantasies. They are trapped by endless nightmares of sordid passions and insatiable lusts.

We often build protective layers of denials, lies, and illusions around our secret pains (like pearls, which are just abnormal growths of secretions layered around irritating foreign objects in the hearts of oysters) until something forces the issue. One day the pry bar of circumstance will force open the shell and expose the secrets for all to see.

Our needs and preferences are a composite of early childhood experiences and encounters—a glimpse of naked flesh furtively stolen from someone stepping out of a bath, a tender touch, a forbidden fondle, a feeling of fleeting pleasure. The nostalgia that shapes adult issues arises from a thirty-year-old memory of sweet-smelling cologne, the touch of warm flesh, or the gentle caress of silken hair across the face. Whether the church wants to deal with it or not, most men are involved with little boy thoughts that have escaped their childhood and entered their adulthood like steam escaping from a shower.

If sexuality is tampered with early in life, it can greatly twist and influence a man’s perception of the whole issue of sex and personality.

"I understood as a child." What a powerful statement! What is normal for a child can be deadly for a man who still understands as a child. The suit is bigger and the man is bigger. He has more hair and bigger biceps, but he is no longer a baby; he’s making babies. Despite his size, his childish understanding is dwarfing him.

Depravation dwarfism is a psychological concept used to describe children who have been physically dwarfed because they were not nurtured, touched, or handled. The lack of love and physical closeness literally caused their physical handicap. Millions of men are dwarfed in their emotions and personalities because they were deprived of love and affection as children.

Although men have toys, many of them use them to cover their pain and shame. They have the toys as well as the contrived expressions and fanfare that go with them, but the toys are relative to culture.

Few people in our country understand that there is little difference between an executive in a business suit and tie who goes to Joe’s Place for happy hour, then staggers home half drunk, and a derelict on the street corner in dirty blue jeans and a raggedy T-shirt sucking on a bottle in a brown paper bag. It’s the same addiction. One addict is simply better dressed than the other. The differences are only economic, social, and cultural. One man plays on a yacht while the other plays on a basketball court. Both men may be trying to escape through the use of toys. One pays more for his toy than the other, but in the end they both fail to escape.

Now there is nothing wrong with adult toys, but we need to know what we use our toys for. Some of us use our toys for identification or to impress people, while others use their toys to escape reality.

There is a universal commonality of masculinity; we are not that different from each other. It doesn’t matter whether we are Oriental, Caucasian, Hispanic, Native American, or African American. Whether we are well educated or illiterate our basic needs are the same, and our ability to express ourselves is relative to the amount of marbles we have in the bag. If you have more marbles, you can do more things.

The book of Proverbs warns us with the passionate writings of a wise father trying to save his son from the dangers of too much, too soon. Many of us didn’t read his words in time. There wasn’t a father patient enough or wise enough to save us from the pain. We became engulfed in excess. Our heads intoxicated with the swirling spirals of unchecked emotions ingested too much too early and never resolved the conflicts that raged within us.

You can’t have manpower until you have boy power. Someone must save the children within us and the children we’ve fathered! They are being destroyed before our very eyes. They are dying in the courtrooms of our land and killing one another on the streets of our cities.

Our own broken childhoods have turned our little children’s lives into unthinkable horror stories, spawning more crimes and murders in the bosoms of children than have ever been witnessed in history! The Apostle Paul warned us in Ephesians 6:4, "And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." Have we so abused our children that now they rise in wrath to kill us?

I Thought as a Child

Never in history have we been so afraid of our own children! Grown men are afraid to walk through crowds of pre-teen and young teenage boys in the city. Young men have become so angry that adult men are intimidated by them. Grandmothers are being killed by raging grandchildren who tie them up in basements and set them on fire! The news media report increasingly gruesome teen atrocities that sound like gothic horror fictional novels or nightmares from hell, but they’re happening. We sit in our easy chairs and watch through television as thirteen-year-old boys stand trial before a judge and jury and receive a life sentence without shedding a tear. Preoccupied by our own pain, we have created monsters in our children. This plague transcends racial and social boundaries. From the well-to-do Menendez boys in affluent California to the boys in the hood of the urban ghetto, the spirit of anger transcends culture. We have become angry, frustrated men, and we have spawned a generation that is angrier than we are.

We have been given too much responsibility too fast. We have seen too much. We have heard too much. We have watched the gropings of twisted flesh on prime time television and have listened to the squeaking noises coming from our parents’ rooms in the night. We have challenged childish minds with manly issues.

The mind of a child should not be stressed with harsh issues like molestation, abuse, or domestic violence. This strain produces a mental hernia that is visible in the character of the youngster for the rest of his life! Many young men have followed their fathers’ footsteps into promiscuity, thinking it natural to define their masculinity by extreme sexuality. Isn’t that what Dad did? Like so many other excesses and escapes, it is just a drug taken too often for a pain that will not go away. It only masks the symptoms without healing the source of the pain.

Nearly every problem in society becomes more inflamed by the raw anger burning out of control within our young men. Racism is on a rampage because men are angry. Violence is sweeping through our schools, our homes, and our prime time crime shows. Even the politically correct demands of the feminist movement have been swept aside by a new wave of raw, angry sexuality that openly exploits and degrades participants on both sides of the gender line. Whenever men are angry, they look for somebody to blame. Adam set the pattern when he blamed Eve for making him disobey God’s command in the Garden of Eden. (See Genesis 3:12.) Whenever we are captured or feel trapped, we cast the blame on someone else. An entire generation has become imprisoned in a pit of anger and frustration, and somebody has to take the blame.

The people of this generation look at each other and say, You’re the reason I’m in a rut! White men say, Blacks are taking all the jobs and forcing the rest of us out! Just because I’m white, I can’t get a job with all this Affirmative Action business. I’m angry—we should do away with these stupid programs! Meanwhile, angry black men are saying, White people are the reason we can’t find decent work. It’s white people’s fault that we can’t earn a living, because we have been discriminated against all those years. Immigrants are saying, Neither of you is right. Here is the real reason. . . . And so the arguing, blaming, and childish finger-pointing go on and on.

Everyone is angry. We wound one another in our jealous, childhood exchanges of bitter words. Our whole culture has become angry because we have provoked our sons to wrath. How does a child forget the scene that replays in his mind every day and night—the picture of his mother angrily wiping away her tears as his father mutters and throws his glass through the television screen? Did he make his father angry that afternoon? Was his mother upset because he couldn’t please Dad enough to calm him down? Surely there was something he could have done to fix whatever was wrong. . . .

Who can erase the burning shame and anger of the boy who dreaded the bus ride home from school? Twenty years later he can still feel the vicious blows, the curses, the blazing hatred in the eyes of his attackers— what had he done to deserve what they did to him? Whatever the reasons, this boy, now inhabiting a frame bearing nearly 280 pounds of muscle, bone, and sinew, can’t control the burning rage and hatred he feels every time he sees a member of that race. He only knows that he wants to strike back again and again until his pain goes away. That’s why he is in prison.

Those feelings of buried childhood pain never leave us. They stay with us all our lives, even when the roles change. We get bigger and we learn to hide them better, but inside the little boy is still intimidated. We still feel fearful. We’re still bullied and overwhelmed by people at times. The child within doesn’t want to deal with the secret thoughts no one else knows about. But many times, the secret thoughts force their way to the surface and press the issue.

What prompts a forty-year-old man to suddenly discover one night as he lies in bed that he needs to be held? All his life he’s been the holder. All of a sudden, this macho man turns to his wife and says, Just hold me. When the pain breaks through, we are wrestled to the ground and made to face an unsettling fact: A hurting little boy still lives within. We cannot divorce ourselves from our inner need. So how do we spell relief?

Society, would you give me permission to be who I am without categorizing what you see? Must I live up to some image that you created for me to conform to? Can you accept the fact that I’m a combination of many different types of dysfunctions bound together within one house?

All that I express, speak, and understand is relative to my childhood. You will never understand the man I am on the outside until you have touched the child within me. Wife, beware. Children, beware. Pastor, beware. Boss, beware. If you never develop empathy for the little boy in me who is holding a blanket and sucking his thumb in a doorway, watching everyone leave, then you will never understand my erratic behavior as a man on the job, or in the bed, or with my own sons and daughters. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child . . ." (1 Corinthians 13:11).

CHAPTER TWO

SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN

Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.

— MARK 10:14–15 —

Many times, buried and suppressed beneath our manly facade and pretense, our fear comes from a trembling, angry, confused child whose frustrations and insecurities are covered with muscles, sweat, and hair. Often, beneath our blustery masculinity, there are issues that must be confronted.

Where can the little child in each of us go but to God? Jesus declares that the kingdom is composed of little children, not just the chronologically young, but even the little children who live in big bodies.

Forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. Any pastor will tell you that the kingdom is one big playground filled with dysfunctional children who have found solace only in the presence of God. That does not mean that this kingdom is simply a collection of losers who couldn’t keep up with winners—no, all men are losers in some way because we are incomplete, and we will never be healed until we come to God like little children.

There is no room in the kingdom for macho men in a power struggle to impress one another with their collection of toys or possessions. It doesn’t matter whether these toys are cars, biceps, girlfriends, church members, or certificates of deposit. We must confront the child in us before we can enjoy the man.

What Could Have Been

And David said, Is there yet any that is left of the house of Saul, that I may shew him kindness for Jonathan’s sake? And there was of the house of Saul a servant whose name was Ziba. And when they had called him unto David, the king said unto him, Art thou Ziba? And he said, Thy servant is he. And the king said, Is there not yet any of the house of Saul, that I may shew the kindness of God unto him? And Ziba said unto the king, Jonathan hath yet a son, which is lame on his feet. And the king said unto him, Where is he? And Ziba said unto the king, Behold, he is in the house of Machir, the son of Ammiel, in Lo-debar.

Then king David sent, and fetched him out of the house of Machir, the son of Ammiel, from Lo-debar.

2 SAMUEL 9:1–5

Mephibosheth is one of my favorite characters in the Bible. His name is a tongue-twister, but it is not nearly as twisted as his life. The Bible describes him as being lame in both of his feet. His story is tragic because he could have been, he should have been, king over Israel! He was the grandson of Saul, who was the first king of Israel. He should have been a strong, handsome, virile leader like Jonathan his father. Instead, when we find Mephibosheth we see a twisted, bruised, incapacitated victim whose broken ankles and twisted limbs have exiled him to a terrible place called Lo-debar.

Rabbinic scholars say Lo-debar, when literally translated from the Hebrew, means place of no communication (lo means no, and debar or devar means word).

Mephibosheth was a deposed and maimed prince from a fallen house of kings, whisked from a royal palace to live in a place of no communication. This wounded young man lost his birthright without uttering a single word or doing a single evil deed. He was just a frightened little five-year-old boy when he was buried in a land of silence, separated from his father and his destiny, and left to dream of what might have been!

Have you ever been to Lo-debar?

Isn’t it amazing how brokenness in one area can rob us of rightful success and imprison us in a valley of regret, a silent place where no one can hear our pain or ease our sorrow?

I could have been. . . . I should have been . . .Mephibosheth could have been a king, but there was a problem in his life. He would have been great, but he had an area in his life that seemed beyond his control. There was nothing wrong with his mind. He could command his legs to walk, but there was a problem between the command and the function. He meant to do it, but he couldn’t and didn’t perform what he meant to perform. He was maimed and handicapped.

Maybe you and I can’t relate to Mephibosheth’s physical handicap, but every one of us has a certain degree of dysfunction. We can give a command in our head, but it just doesn’t function in our lives. Our dysfunction can leave us in Lo-debar, gagged, hopeless, and alone, when we could have been—and should have been—kings sitting in a palace.

Mephibosheth was Jonathan’s son and King Saul’s grandson. He was the only surviving heir and male descendant of Israel’s first royal family. He should have been groomed to be king over Israel, but instead his father was tragically killed in battle and he was left living like a broken-down recluse in Lo-debar—stripped of his crown and wounded in spirit, a long-forgotten prisoner of his own infirmity. Yet the only thing wrong with Mephibosheth was that he was lame in both of his feet.

Wretched Mephibosheth is a vivid picture of you and me, trying desperately to deal with our inward handicaps without letting anyone know what really goes on inside. Mephibosheth is the model for every man who should have been here, but instead ended up there. The reason men end up in Lo-debar instead of the palace is because something occurred in their life that so traumatized them that it kept them from reaching the hope of their calling. Our handicaps—whatever form they may take—keep us from reaching our potential or fulfilling our dreams. We have stopped short of the goal because a hidden issue in our life seems to hold us back.

Carried to the Calling

Now when Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, was come unto David, he fell on his face, and did reverence. And David said, Mephibosheth. And he answered, Behold thy servant!

And David said unto him, Fear not: for I will surely shew thee kindness for Jonathan thy father’s sake, and will restore thee all the land of Saul thy father; and thou shalt eat bread at my table continually. And he bowed himself, and said, What is thy servant, that thou shouldest look upon such a dead dog as I am?

Then the king called to Ziba, Saul’s servant, and said unto him, I have given unto thy master’s son all that pertained to Saul and to all his house. Thou therefore, and thy sons, and thy servants, shall till the land for him, and thou shalt bring in the fruits, that thy master’s son may have food to eat: but Mephibosheth thy master’s son shall eat bread alway at my table. Now Ziba had fifteen sons and twenty servants. Then said Ziba unto the king, According to all that my lord the king hath commanded his servant, so shall thy servant do. As for Mephibosheth, said the king, he shall eat at my table, as one of the king’s sons. And Mephibosheth had a young son, whose name was Micha. And all that dwelt in the house of Ziba were servants unto Mephibosheth. So Mephibosheth dwelt in Jerusalem: for he did eat continually at the king’s table; and was lame on both his feet.

2 SAMUEL 9:6–13

Mephibosheth is no longer a five-year-old boy when he enters the scene in 2 Samuel 9. He is a grown man with a son of his own.

It all began when David called in Ziba, a former servant of King Saul, to ask if there was anyone left of the house of Saul to whom David could show kindness. This man told King David that only one descendant of his old friend, Jonathan, was still alive—Mephibosheth, the lame man. This maimed prince lived in another man’s house in Lo-debar, the place of no communication, the land of lost and forgotten potential. David’s answer was immediate and forceful: He sent messengers, or perhaps Ziba himself, to go fetch him out.

Jonathan and David were close friends and covenant brothers. The Bible clearly shows that they had the most intimate covenant relationship two men could ever have as friends. David meant to keep his oath to his deceased friend Jonathan, so his invitation to bring Mephibosheth was genuine and trustworthy.

Unfortunately, there was a problem. Although Mephibosheth was called, he couldn’t come on his own. Someone had to go get him. The real truth of the matter is that many of us have been called, but we can’t get to the place we have been called to dwell in because we are so distracted and crippled by